


the stages of drowning

by twenty_committee



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Colorblind GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Developing Relationship, Drowning, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Minecraft, Pining, Realistic, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Swimming, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:09:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27077029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twenty_committee/pseuds/twenty_committee
Summary: It shouldn’t be possible to drown on land, but that’s what George is doing. In questions, in love, in the bluegreen colour of Dream’s voice, in how he wants so much more.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 188





	1. shock

**Author's Note:**

> Please be respectful to people. Do not force ideas on relationships on anyone. 
> 
> The synesthesia described is mostly chromesthesia (sound to colour) and touch to colour.

'Blue is your favourite colour?' Dream asks one night, sitting on their little outcrop above the fir trees, watching the fiery streaks of sunset fade to a blue so deep it's almost black. George can see why he's asking. It's a beautiful colour, a deeper and fuller shade than the little lake nearby could ever hope to be.

'It is.'

'It's a good colour.' When Dream is calm and contemplative like this, a shimmering colour comes out of his voice, rising up slow and liquid like it's floating to the surface of deep water. It's almost the same blue as the sky, that deep rich shade.

George is exhausted in all the right ways today, the last afternoon heat sending ripples of soft cerulean echoing through his muscles, the groaning ache of just enough. _Just enough_ , those are good, rounded words to hold on the tip of his tongue. Just enough means being this close to Dream in the bluedark, drinking in the slipping sigh of evening. Close on their temporary little perch, hands close but not touching yet. Close enough, just enough, to his voice. Dream's voice is all for him right now, and George can live in that, wrap himself up in the pressure of it for morning when the blue evening burns away and they wander and hunt and keep asking themselves: _what comes after this?_ What do they do once the dragon is gone?

It's hard to think of the future when there's _blue_ like this, softening the edges of all his thoughts. George would be willing to keep wandering and hunting alongside Dream- exploring the nether, experimenting with new potions, trying to cook new food that makes Dream laugh. Some part of him tucked down deep inside craves _more_ , but he ignores it for now, for now. This is enough.

This is enough, here, where the world is dipped in blue, drowned in it, the sun slipping like fiery Icarus into the sea. Here, Dream's shade of blue twines up like glowing Orion into the indigo night, wrapping George up and pulling him softly, softly under the tide.

Dream leans back on his hands and tilts his head up to the first glitter of stars far above. George is so aware of him, his warmth keeping the chill at bay, the burnt-orange sparks where Dream's knee occasionally presses against his. God, he's being ridiculous. Two layers of clothes between them and he's already craving more. If it was any other time George would shove him and challenge him to some race, but now all he can do is stare at the curve of his neck against the stars. He watches him breathe, the rise and fall like night and ocean, following the swell and sigh with his own. The simple, endless rhythm of them both.

Dream turns to look at him, sudden and startling, but George is so overfull of blue and aching want that all he can do is stare at the full line of his lower lip. Instead of thinking _what comes now_ , he waits, he thinks _come what may_. In the last strains of sunset, Dream is lit in gold, but even that washes away. Only the light of the moon touches him now.

'Are you cold?' Dream asks, and George has to take a minute to sort his thoughts out of the blue, but Dream shuffles closer anyways and wraps an arm around his shoulders. His breath is warm and velvet gold against his neck.

If they touched skin on skin, the orange of warm hands would chase away the cooling night creeping steel-blue up his bones. If they touched there'd be new constellations. But they don't, even though they could have anything they wanted.

'I wish I could show you the rest of the colours,' Dream says softly.

 _You do_ , George thinks with a pang of night-deep blue, echoing around his ribcage. Because Dream's voice is _green, green, green_. Green and blue and shining, weaving through his life, the ocean he wants to fall into.

'I wish,' he echoes, for all different things, and breathes out, breathes into the endless blue, closing his eyes to drown in it. In Dream. Some time between sleep and morning he can feel calloused fingers against the side of his neck, painting in the colours of campfires before they die.

In the morning they start walking everywhere and nowhere again, chasing each other up and down the hills, climbing on the cobblestone boulders. Dream turns to look and smile at him and say his name over and over. They don't talk about what or where they're going, or where the red thread of the future leads. Dream is with him, and that's enough. It's all easy, easy, just enough to stay afloat.

***

It's a few days later that things stop being easy and everything stops being enough. It happens in stages. It starts with the river.

Dream stops suddenly on a low hill in a flower forest, and George almost stumbles over him. Dream grabs him, broad hands, skin on skin, orange blooming in George's vision.

'That river,' he says breathlessly, pointing to a pretty blue thread winding around a little hill speckled with blue flowers. 'I want to live somewhere like that.'

Every time Dream adjusts his grip, new orange curls up through George's veins. He's breathless too, for all different reasons. They don't talk about settling down. He never thought Dream would want it. He can't.

'It's a pretty place,' he agrees. 'But are you really going to live in a flower forest?'

'George,' he says plaintively, tipping up his mask. The sudden mischievous orange-gold shimmer to his voice matches where his hands touch and George can't speak for a moment. 'I found a place with blue flowers just for you, and you don't even want to live here?'

His heart stutters. Dream laughs and lets go, bounding down the slope. The places he used to touch feel cold without him, living tattoos of all the things he's changed in George.

'Fine, I'll find somewhere else,' he calls.

That night, they settle close to the river. George catches Dream watching him across the fire as they cook. He doesn't wear his mask while they're alone, and the firelight paints the lines of his face golden. His axe is set aside and his chestplate is undone. If George looked, he could see muscles liquid in the gold light and his chest where his shirt collar drops low enough. He doesn't look, though, and keeps his eyes focused on the fish he's turning slowly over the flames. The cinnamon coloured pops of the logs fill his head, driving away thoughts of a house by the river, surrounded by blue flowers. A house with Dream.

'Want to go swimming with me?' Dream asks, and green and blue pour back in. George almost drops the fish into the fire.

'What, in that river by the flowers?'

He can hear the smile, _his smile_ , green like George imagines his eyes are. Warm and deep. 'Yeah. I'll keep you safe from the squids.'

George rolls his eyes and tosses his skewer at him. 'Shut up and eat your fish, Dream.'

Dream comes to sit next to him once he's done, and out of the corner of his eye George can see the way he's breathing, slow and easy when George's head is anything but. _I found this just for you_. Dream thought about a place to live with him. It's too much, a shock that would break this careful tapestry of their life, and so he doesn't say anything about it.

'Why do you want me to go swimming with you?' George asks. His voice shakes, just a little, apricot ripples in the night.

Dream just grins back, bright in the dark. There's a curious glint to his eyes. 'Why not?'

By the river, Dream pulls his hoodie and shirt off and dives in a single fluid motion. He surfaces with his hair soaked dark and a exhilarated laugh that bubbles up green and gold through George's chest.

'You're going to catch a cold,' George predicts, focusing on undoing the straps of his armour and the pearly bite of cold on his fumbling fingers instead of at the shirtless man in the river. Dream hauls himself up on the bank and grabs his hand. He's still warm, even though the water must be freezing.

'Come on, Georgie. The water is fine.' He tilts his head and the moonlight slides over his features, quirked up in mischief. Orange heat, gold laughter- George feels like their campfire, flooding with sparks swirling up into the blue.

He slowly steps in. The water is freezing cold and sends silver streaks lancing through his head where it eddies around his ankles. Dream splashes him and he shrieks.

'You can't do it that way. It's like tearing off a bandage. You have to do it fast.'

George has had too much experience with fast, of falling all at once. Dream treads water slowly, eyes on him. George wants, guilty and selfish, for things to always be this way. To be Dream's, for Dream to be his too. Even more, he wants more, a hunger deep in his blue- and green-painted bones, and that is the kind of thing that makes _just enough_ not enough at all. That's the first step of drowning.

He takes a step back, poised for a second, and then he jumps.

Shocking silver floods his head, cold lightning strikes all through his bones, but then there's gold and orange again, pulling him to the surface. George gasps for breath, floating in front of Dream. His hands are warm against his ribcage. Bare hands, not yet bare skin. Not enough. Not enough.

'You didn't take your shirt off?' Dream asks, smiling. George huffs at him and strokes back, trying to pull off the soaked shirt. His heart is pounding. The world blurs in the distance, but Dream is still bright and clear. George would know him blind or deaf. With his voice, with his touch, with his warmth. He throws the wet shirt at Dream, who catches it and hangs it on a nearby branch.

'The water is freezing and you should be ashamed of having a stupid idea,' he says.

'It's a _great_ idea.' Dream lets go and rolls over to dive. The water is so clear that he can see him twisting like a dolphin, floating in the light wavering blue. George takes a deep breath and sinks down.

It's so quiet underwater. It's like all sound has become the purest form of itself, and the few colours there are fill him up. The quiet makes things clearer. The absence of Dream's hands on him makes him want more.

Dream swims closer, eyes catching the filtering moonlight, and reaches out to touch where George's hair floats around his head. His own blond hair makes a drifting starburst.

They kick back to the surface, and sound rushes back in, bright and sharp against his fingertips. George is still sinking, gone, drowning in Dream. He smells like pine and his body is solid and warm when George lays his head on his shoulder. He can't help it. He can't help any of this.

Dream's arms go around him. He hums a soft forest green laugh, a little wistful.

'I've never really explored underwater,' he says. 'It's better than I expected. We can find an ocean and do it properly.'

'I want to live by the ocean,' George says, the words just slipping out. The world glows like sunset. He is drunk on it. Dream's fingers swirl on his back, between his shoulder blades.

'Do you?' he asks softly. George can't look at him, or Dream will see the drowning want in his eyes. He'll see how much George wants him, how much all of this has sunk bone-deep. That's where Dream is, what he's changed and rewritten, how much of him is painted green and blue.

He can't let him know that, because after Dream knows, this wandering and closeness will all be gone, and George needs Dream like he needs oxygen.

'We should sleep soon,' he says. His voice is trembling like thinned paint. After a moment, Dream lets go.

'Yeah,' he says, his voice only faintly green. George rolls onto his back and wishes that the silver cold would wash him clean and empty and free. He hears Dream climb onto the bank and head back to camp.

He's stretched out worryingly close to the fire when George finally returns.

'So?' he demands, crossing arms over his bare chest as if that's going to protect him.

'So what, Georgie?' Dream asks mischievously. Oh lord, his _smile_.

'So where did you put my shirt?'

'It's over there. I'm drying it off for you.' He waves to where the T-shirt is hanging near the fire. George touches it. It's still soaking wet. Dream laughs his wheezy laugh. 'I can't believe you jumped in while you were fully dressed!'

'Shut up.' George combs fingers through his wet hair, trying to make it lie flat. Dream looks like he's been poured from gold, painted by the fire. George wants to run hands through his hair, darker gold with water. He wants to press his palms against his bare chest and feel the violet flutter of his heartbeat. 'Why aren't you wearing your clothes?'

'I'm not dry yet.' Dream catches his gaze. 'Come sit down, you're going to freeze to death over there.'

George sits beside him and stretches his legs towards the fire. The heat soaks through him, sunny yellow and smooth as butter, and George groans appreciatively. The fire burns lower, but neither of them get up. Everything is falling slowly towards this one point, firelight and starlight and Dream's warmth against him. George wants to lean fully into him and touch and be touched, have _more_. His skin is faintly shadowed where his muscles are, shining wet. It must be selfish of him to want more when Dream's already given him colour and the whole wide world. He knows he should be careful, because losing Dream would make the world grey and dead. What a way to live: always drowning in too much or not enough.

All too late he realizes that Dream is looking at him too. Something hot and heavy and stifling red gathers in his throat like storm clouds. He can't look away, can't explain his want. His eyes look gold but George imagines that they're the shade he thinks the sea is.

'What are you thinking of, Dream?' he breathes, barely audible, not wanting the soft apricot and blue of his own voice to disturb this. He clenches his hands hard, trying not to want and want and want so much. _What comes after this?_

He doesn't answer. His eyes flutter and draw down to George's mouth and linger for a moment, a moment where all the stars sing in orange gold. George can feel his pulse in red-violet at his throat, swelling in hope.

Dream pulls away so suddenly that it's like jumping into cold water. Without even looking at George, he leaves the camp. There's a thud by the nearby bank and then a splash and a ragged gasp.

He comes back a moment later with his hair darker and sticking to his forehead again. There's droplets of water rolling down his chest. George's warmth is gone now, but he is lost to Dream, always. If something has broken between them, he's lost everything already.

 _The world will never get us down, Georgie!_ Oh, how George wishes he believed that.

'You should go to bed,' Dream says, muffled, back turned. He still touches George's shoulder, just a brush, just a campfire spark in the night, before going to bed, but he doesn't look at him.

George stays by the fire for a while longer, watching the dancing gold flames. Dream described them to him once. There's supposed to be orange there, and red, and it all glows like it's breathing.

He can hear that Dream isn't sleeping behind him. His breathing isn't slow enough. George _knows_ him, knows his breathing and his laugh and his beautiful voice. He knows that and yet it's not enough, not enough to be able to tell Dream everything.

He pretends that Dream is asleep. It's better for them both. By the fire, George traces the sickly sweet contours of the word _guilt_ on his tongue, the realization of change.

Dream isn't asleep even when George finally crawls into his own bed and stares up into the blue of night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the great response to my earlier fic! 
> 
> More realistic Minecraft, inspired by my own synesthesia.
> 
> -1050


	2. hold your breath

When George wakes, he holds the sweet taste of Dream's name on his tongue for a guilty, stuttering moment. The sun is well up, and he's stiff from the exertion of yesterday.

'Finally up, sleeping beauty?' Dream asks from the fire. He's smiling just like usual, like nothing at all has changed. It hurts, a little, a pang of dull brackish red beneath his ribs, but George swallows it down. It's better if Dream doesn't want to talk about it. Talking means change and change means that Dream could be gone, and all the colours with him.

 _Selfish, selfish_ , the grayish pink word patters like raindrops down the front of his throat.

'You should have woken me earlier.' He sits up, squinting into the bright day, and his stiff bundled shirt hits him in the chest. 'Wha-'

'Put your shirt on.' Dream chuckles and sits down on his bed. George pulls it over his head, hoping it hides his flushing confusion. A cooked fish is pushed into his hand. 'And eat fast, I let you sleep in so now we're losing time.'

'What's up with you today?' George adjusts his shirt and picks up his fish. 'Why are we losing time?'

'I just want to go.' Dream leaps up again and goes to pick up his axe, swinging it over his head in easy, practiced motion. When he catches George looking, he grins wide and exuberant, and a burst of glimmering green blooms in his chest.

Their mornings are slow and easy most of the time. They sit by the smoldering fire and eat and talk about what they'll do that day. They haven't had a real aim in ages, not like the dragon. Their life is quiet, usual, _easy_ , and George doesn't know what to think about the sudden change. He doesn't know what he wants to think.

He packs up their temporary camp, practically automatic in his movements now, trying not to think about their talks of a _house by the water_. With blue flowers. With Dream.

He feels him before he gets close, hears the pearly white-grey ripples of footsteps, imagines he could feel gold orange heat on his back.

'Ready?' Dream asks, holding out his hand to pull him up, and George takes it without thinking because it's _Dream_ and he looks so bright. The glow of excitement looks good on him. It matches the orange warmth where they touch.

'So, are you going to tell me where we're going?'

Dream crooks an eyebrow at him for a moment, as if in confusion, and then laughs. 'It's a surprise.'

If it was anyone else, it would be stupid to follow them into the unknown. For Dream- George would follow him to the end of the world. Does he know that?

Dream hauls him up and they both hold on for a heartbeat longer. His fingertips prickle.

'Lead the way,' George says, picking up his sword, and Dream does.

They've been heading in the vague northerly direction of the mountain range for a while, but Dream leads them sharply west now, the sun at their backs and stretching their shadows along the plains. George rolls his shoulders into the butter yellow sunlight on the back of his neck and watches their shadows dance across the grass and the sunflowers. He could recognize Dream just from this, the scraps of shadow, from the set of his shoulders and the sway in his stance. From the way he matches George's shadow beside him, just as the world should be. Everything about him is written green and blue in George's bones.

If he raises his hand a little, the fingertips of their long shadows brush and meld, and his own feel empty and stone-grey cool. From the plains, he can't see much more than the forest in the distance. He has no idea what Dream wants over here, and he doesn't know if he cares. All that matters is that they're together, _Dream and George_ , because they can take on the world that way.

'What kind of wood do you like?' Dream interrupts, rummaging in his pack. George stops.

'What? What kind of _wood?'_

Dream pulls out a few sticks. 'Birch? Or oak?'

George is thoroughly baffled. 'Any. All. What does it matter?'

Dream grins. 'Are you telling me you've never put thought into what kind of wood you like?'

'I don't- Dream, don't _put_ it like that.' Thick maroon gathers in his throat and flushes across his face.

Dream wheezes. 'Like what, Georgie? I just wanna know what kind of wood I should give you-'

'Stop offering me your _sticks_ , Dream,' he deadpans, but the laughter and the sunlight gets him smiling.

Dream is on the ground wheezing now, face flushed with happiness, and the world glows green. George's chest feels suddenly tight and full to bursting with deep red, about to spill out like blood. This teasing is usual. This is _normal_.

'Fine. I like birch. Give me your birch sticks.' His attempt at joking has gone all tight and flat and sickly yellow again but he hopes he's the only one who can hear it.

'No. I need them right now.' Dream starts walking again, towards the forest.

'So what was the _point_ of that then?'

'So I know.'

George laughs, warmer again. 'You were asking about my favourite colour a few days ago as well. What are you doing?'

'I want to know about you.' Dream bumps their shoulders together.

'You already do,' George says. Dream knows him, he knows everything. They've been through hell and back together.

'I know,' he says softly. For a moment, George realizes how close they stand, with the wind all around and the sunflowers bobbing their bright heads. Butter yellow and orange and aching red heat. That's what Dream does to him. He sets him _alight_.

'I get to know more about you too, then,' he says.

'Like what?'

George looks around and trails his fingers through the velvety petals of the sunflowers, the soft prickles sparking painful, acidic yellow when they catch his skin.

'What's your favourite flower?'

'You're getting me flowers?' Dream chuckles. 'It's the rose.'

The rose. George turns that over and over in his head, and holds it beneath his tongue. The sun sparkles off Dream's chestplate. The diamond looks smoky grey to him, like iron, but there's a translucency to it that makes Dream's back muscles _ripple_ when he walks-

George hurries to catch up, trying not to look. Maroon and rose lay heavy in his mouth.

***

That night, they set up camp by a river again. They chanced walking through some of the evening, following the sun as it dipped down below the horizon. Dream looks like he's ready to chase it all the way back to its golden throne, expression bright and _intense_ , always looking west. He's sharpening his axe again. He's been collecting birch wood if they run across it all day, and George can't tell if it's supposed to be an elaborate joke or if Dream really is doing something.

'I haven't seen a lot of endermen recently.' George squints at a distant, shambling zombie, nothing like the tall, graceful figures of the endermen. He doesn't mind. Their screeches fill his mind with a sickening violet-white that lingers long after they're dead.

'I think a lot might have gone back to- to the end.' Dream's voice dips at the name of that place, the place of the dragon that haunted them and perched as the shining goal that welded this bond between them. The end, the place of porous pale stone and air that felt thick in their throats, that made them lightheaded and pushed on the insides of their minds with a pressure they could nearly feel.

'I hate the end,' George says, staring into the fire. He wants Dream to sit down beside him, to be _closer_ , and he hates himself for it.

'Yeah.' Dream can't seem to stay still. He fingers the handle of his axe, eyes searching the fire. Sudden grief is written in his voice, a drowning terrible grayish blue. 'I almost lost you, George. When the dragon got you, I- I don't know what I would have done.'

George remembers. He remembers the dragon diving at him, purple eyes blazing with a maddening, _intelligent_ rage. He remembers her scales ramming against him like a meteor, her translucent pale teeth, the charred smell of her fire, and the whole world disappearing into yellow-white pain. He remembers her howl, and the wounded animal _scream_ of Dream. Of the purple stars in the sky as the dragon died.

'I'm okay now,' he hears himself say. His hand drifts to the scar beneath his shirt, and Dream comes to sit beside him again. He'll always be there when George needs him, but the problem is that he _wants_ him. Survival isn't enough.

'Does it hurt?'

'Not much. Not anymore.'

They don't talk about the end. They don't talk about the kiss, because George barely knows if it was real or just a product of his fevered imagination when Dream was carrying his battered body to the shimmering portal, begging him to keep breathing.

 _Keep breathing, George, please, oh God, I can't lose you. Come on, just hold on a little longer for me, I promise everything will be okay after this_...

 _I believe you_ , George wants to say, because Dream fulfilled his promise and gave him the world. It's only his own fault that he wants more, more, more.

'Thank you,' George murmurs. A deep, deep part of him is whispering like the endermen inside his head, filling him up blue and green, wanting to lean over and press his mouth to where Dream's neck meets his jaw.

He doesn't notice he's holding his palm against the old scar until Dream pulls his hand away. The phantom pain lingers. Yellow and purple and pale.

'Talk to me,' he blurts, before Dream can ask any questions, before he can say anything like _kiss me_. Dream will help- Dream will drown him in the bluegreen and make the pain nothing more than the sunlight shimmer on the surface of the water. If George is going to drown, he wants to drown in him.

'Why? About what?'

'About anything. It just- it helps with the pain.' He swallows, not looking, not looking at Dream's breathing, or his soft, concerned expression. 'Tell me about your favourite colour.'

'It's green.' He takes a small, sharp breath, half a laugh if even, his body swaying towards George's on their little rock before the fire. George stares into the fire, silently pleading for Dream, _come on_ …

Dream leans in and their bodies press together, shoulder and hollowed-out ribcages and legs. George doesn't know if it's him or Dream who breathes out the quiet shuddering sigh as his vision fills with warm orange.

'I know you can't see green,' he says. 'I wish I could show you.'

Oh, if only Dream knew that George's world was soaked with green because of him, that he was the reason he knew what summer should be like.

'It's okay. Really.' It gets a little laugh out of him, and it gets Dream to sit closer and lean his head back on his shoulder.

'I think my favourite shade is…' Dream hums. 'When you're walking beneath the oak trees during summer, where the sunlight makes them really glow. Remember that?'

George remembers, of course he does. Last summer, before the dragon, running with Dream through the airy bright forest, laughing and laughing because they had the entire world. Dream had challenged him to a play duel and chased him until they'd both fallen from laughter and exhaustion, and then he'd climbed atop George and held up his axe and laughed that he'd won, shining gold in the sun. Gold and red, in his laugh and in the heat coiled in George's chest.

George is glad the darkness hides his face, and that he's the only one that can taste the bittersweet purple of longing. Dream's face is gilded with golden firelight and shadowed deep, but George knows every line and plane.

'Yeah, I remember.' He wishes he could trace the faint scars on Dream's shoulders.

He wonders if they hurt, if he could sing them better. He'd sing for Dream if he wanted, he'd follow him to the end of the world.

Dream is watching the fire, but he glances up at George and his mouth turns up into a private smile, the kind of smile that promises the whole world, and it makes his heart _sing_.

Oh. Oh, George is _gone_ for him, isn't he? The realization is sudden and monumental and yet nothing at all has changed. This is simply how it's always been, since long before the dragon, but George hadn't admitted it until now.

He feels like there should be more, at the realization. Fireworks. New constellations. The world singing bluegreen. Dream looking at him and saying something impossible, like _I feel the same_. Nothing happens but the crackling of the fire to mark this moment, and Dream's steady weight against him. That's enough, though, just being close to him. It's all George wants.

Dream turns to look at him and all George can focus on is the swell of his lower lip, the way the firelight plays in his eyes. Gone. He's long gone to him.

'Why does my voice make the pain better?'

'Why wouldn't it?' George returns, but a cold fist clenches around his heart. He doesn't want to explain his colours. He doesn't want to see Dream pretend to understand to make him feel better, and keep him at a careful distance because his mind works in all the wrong ways. 'It just does, Dream. You- you have a good voice.'

That's only a lie in that _good_ is to Dream's voice what George's colourblindness is to the sunset. It's not the only part of him that George wants more of, either. His eyes are drawn back to Dream's mouth, and his broad shoulders, and he thinks maybe he _deserves_ to be kept at a distance. He shouldn't feel this way about his best friend, but he does. All he can do now is hold onto the comfortable _now_ as long as he can, before everything changes.

Dream has a way of looking at him that makes George feel raw and exposed, like he can see _everything_. All his sun-fierce intensity is turned entirely to him, and all of it is maddeningly _gentle_.

'Is it? I'm glad it helps.' His hand comes to trace George's face, his cheek, his jaw, painting tattoos of fire. His voice is so soft, drawing him under the bluegreen tide with barely a ripple. His eyes are as deep as the ocean. 'I care about you, George.'

If he said it back, Dream would hear the truth in his voice. He would hear that George is long gone and drowned in him, that he wants him, that he _needs_ him in a way that goes beyond mere survival.

'I know.' He's suffocating on need, choking on his words, on his breath, trying to hold himself together. 'Go to bed.'

He moves away to his side of the fire before Dream can coo at him, _say it back, Georgie!_ In retrospect, it was stupid to take off his armour when they could still hear monsters around, but George wasn't thinking about anything except _I care about you, George_. About Dream's hands and his body by the fire. He feels ready to burn up gold and orange, and it makes him reckless. He tears off his chestplate and tosses it beside the fire, just before Dream screams the warning.

The impact comes first, the _thud_ of the arrowhead burying itself in his side, and then the pain rushes in to fill the space. His vision splits with yellow-white, echoing through his hollow body. Somewhere far away there's the clatter of Dream's axe against a skeleton, his inhuman growl as he finishes it off. George is aware of nothing until he feels hands on him, and it makes him smile through the pain. Dream is here now. Dream will always be here when George needs him, he will make everything better. He grabs his wrists, searching for the warm orange of his touch, the beautiful colours of his voice, but the yellow blocks everything out.

'Dream,' he gasps. _Come on, more_.

'You idiot. You _idiot_.' Dream's mouth is nearly against his skin, bent over him to feel out the wound. 'You fucking idiot.'

'You're the idiot,' George slurs. His head is spinning. He's almost gotten used to the bursting yellow when Dream's fingers find the serrated bone edge of the skeleton's arrowhead in his ribs, and the bright pain makes him twist in Dream's arms, jagged ribbons of yellow-white twisting the same way in his head.

'Shh, stay still.' Dream's body presses into his, immobilizing him from moving further. It's a good, safe feeling. Dream will keep him safe. George is drifting somewhere further away, somewhere away from the painfully bright yellow.

'-gonna have to cut it off,' he hears, and then a wave of cool silver over his suddenly bare chest. 'God, you _moron_. Taking off your fucking armour. And I can't get the- this _fucking shirt-_ '

The movement is jostling the arrow in his body, and George can feel wetness on his cheeks, words crawling up his throat.

'Fuck, get it out, it's so- it's too much _yellow_ , I can't-' The acidic shade burns faster at his fingertips, like lightning crawling down his bones, burning up the wick of his body into Dream's flames. Now come the fireworks, the dizzy faraway part of his mind says, now come the new constellations, his vision blurring with so many yellow-white sparks like stars. 'Dream,' he gasps, tasting tears. 'Please.'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I can't get it out slowly.' Dream's fingers trace his jaw, impossibly gentle. Something is pushed against his lips. George bites down on the bundled fabric, knowing what's coming but shying from it all the same. He's scared, but that's okay, because Dream is here. 'Take a deep breath,' he murmurs, fingers pushing George's hair back from his forehead. His eyes look yellow, too, but they're a warm shade, a gold George loves.

The arrow is jerked out, fast and sudden, and George feels his scream only as a purplish buzz in his throat as the whole world blanks to prickling yellow, dragging him down into suffocating dark water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to update more frequently. I've been working with a skephalo fic. Enjoy.
> 
> I'm on Discord if you want more information on synesthesia.
> 
> -1050


	3. unconscious, subconscious

In the dark of dreams, George knows nothing but colour. Somewhere far away there is green and blue sound, singing. Somewhere closer, Dream guards him against the night. 

_And the universe said I love you_ , the blue echoes, more than thought but less than word, like a quiet mockery of how Dream pleaded that against his neck in the suffocating silence of the end. The words breathe and rush like waves, dragging his body down into the dark. 

Dream pulls him back. Dream holds onto him, and warm orange holds back the leaden dark, like their campfire against the night. George _breathes_.

Waking from the dark is slow and fast and full of falling. Sleep is heavy around him, filling his ribcage like dark water, but Dream _glows_ like memory and fire and butter-warm sunlight and a hundred thousand moments of being close, and George reaches for him, in the dark, for the colour wavering at the sunlit surface.

His vision is blurry with pain, but he'd recognize Dream anywhere and everywhere. George would know him through fire-bright touch and the pattern of his stride, like the ripples carved into the beach sand. He would know him by the shape of his hands and the golden shade of his eyes and the bluegreen of his voice. He feels like summer sunlight through oak leaves and sinking into bed at the end of a long day. He feels like river currents and someone else's hands working the tension from your shoulders.

Dream feels like _everything,_ and it's ruining him.

He breaks the surface of sleep and takes a gasping, painful breath, scorching like the acrid fumes of a furnace. He can't help but cough, and it sends jagged white-yellow lightning through his ribs. He can barely think through the pain, sharp and scattering at the edge of his vision.

'George, oh my _God-'_ Dream is there, arms around him, warm and steady, home port in the raging sea. George holds onto him desperately, knowing that if he loses him he loses the world. 

'Dream,' he rasps. Maybe this is heaven, maybe he really is dead. This feels like heaven. 

'You're _alive_.' Dream is- _Dream is crying_ , tears catching the moonlight, and it looks so wrong and so ethereal that George just stares.

'Dream?' he repeats, trying to make sense of anything. The world flashes between moonlight and yellow pain. Teardrops and pain and campfire warmth.

'You're alive. I thought I'd- I'd lost you.' Dream buries his face in George's shoulder, shaking, and they hold onto each other, drowning and desperate.

In his arms, surrounded by the scent of campfires and pine, George starts to piece together the half-remembered night: messy head, messy campsite, and an arrow through his ribs. A stupid, careless mistake. He should have known better. He should have done a million things differently.

'I'm sorry.' His mouth is thick with guilt, choking him. 'Oh my God, I'm so sorry.'

'Do you care about me at _all_ , George?' Dream's voice splits the air, cracking, _shattering_ , and George flinches back. 'Do you know how fucking _scared_ I was?'

George's heart is hammering so violet-bright that he can feel it in his fingertips. Maybe it's the pain or how close Dream is, but for a moment he wants to tell him everything, everything. He doesn't, because it would only make this worse, but he imagines it with his head pressed into Dream's shoulder. All the blankets smell like him. George feels alive, alive, and like he's two breaths from drowning. He _hates_ the pain he's caused Dream. He hates himself.

'I know,' he whispers back. His throat is dry and this moment feels too sacred and fragile to break. Dream laughs, harsh and hissing, and George pretends for both their sakes to ignore the way his voice shakes and the wet gleam of his eyes.

'No, you don't.' His words sting and his touch is so, so gentle. Fingers trace his jaw, his brow, brush his hair from his forehead. He can feel the soft heat of Dream's skin, his breath against his cheek. All the bedsheets smell like him. 'I know you don't.'

George turns away, choked off with guilt and _Dream_ , and wipes the taste of blood from his mouth. His head is still aching sharply and his side feels tender and he feels like a tiny boat on the brink of an endless ocean, at the whims of the pattern of Dream's heart, his hands, his breathing.

'You're right,' he offers. His voice is hoarse and frail in the silence of the night. Dream scoffs, or tries to. It comes out like a sob.

'If I had lost you-' 

_Please don't die, oh God, I love you_ -

Dream sounds shaky and ruined, utterly vulnerable. George is held in a storm of blue and green, both of them about to sink under. 

'You didn't.' 

'Barely.' Dream's tone drips maroon self-loathing. 'I think I- God, I wasn't thinking-'

George's question dies on his lips when Dream touches his side, muted orange and apologetic, to pull his shirt up. It's Dream's shirt, he notices. It dwarfs him.

Beneath are his ribs held together with fabric and string. A wound that will be a long time healing, if it heals at all.

'I did that when I pulled out the arrow,' he says, and there is no green in his voice at all, only sickly guilt and self-hatred, the colours George knows so well.

He has no words to make it better. When he reaches up to pull Dream closer, his side sends flares of lemon yellow across his vision, but he doesn't care. Dream rests his head against his chest like George is made of porcelain and he's afraid to touch.

Dream has never been afraid of anything.

***

George is drowning.

This is what it must feel like: the slow choking of something that should be there but isn't. It's stupid and pathetic how much George hurts when it's all his fault but Dream-

Dream won't _look_ at him anymore.

He can still walk, a little bit. Not far. Not fast. He stares into the fire again, watching it flicker gold. It's orange and red, he knows that, but he knows those colours only in Dream's hands.

'Thank you,' he whispers. The blue night catches his words and doesn't give them back. Dream doesn't acknowledge him. George sits up straighter. 'Thank you for cooking.'

'I heard you the first time.' His voice is blank and flat, and George recoils, lip curling over the bitter purple colour of shock and resent. Dream _never_ talks to him that way.

'I just-' George stops, shame overpowering him. God, he's an idiot. 

The fire burns lower. Normally, he'd be curled up against Dream's chest now, so close and warm he couldn't tell where the borders of their bodies were, and laughing to the stars with him. Maybe this is the shock he needed, like silver ice and lightning strikes.

Dream is not his. 

He's turning something over and over in his palms, fingertips reddening with heat and pressure. George catches glimpses of it through the flames.

'What's that?'

Dream doesn't answer him, and even though he _gets it_ , George presses his lips together. Dream has never ignored him before. Dream always treated him like he was everything important, like George was all he needed, and now he won't even _look_ at him.

'Your arrow,' he says finally. The tension of his jaw makes it clear he doesn't want to talk.

They say nothing more until the fire is almost ashes, and then Dream rises with the firelight flickering on his shoulders.

'Does it hurt?' he asks. Maybe it does. George can't see the yellow when the whole world is glowing sunset. Dream's voice is hesitantly tender in a way George knows he doesn't deserve. He doesn't dare lean into it.

'No.' _Not when I'm with you_ , he doesn't say. They don't say anything anymore.

He pushes himself up and Dream is immediately beside him with a warning noise. Yellow flashes across his gaze, but he doesn't care.

'Careful,' Dream murmurs.

'I always-' George cuts himself off because that's not true anymore, and they both know it. 'I am now.'

Dream's jaw tenses. His hand hovers at the small of George's back, ready to catch him. George wishes it wasn't like that. He would rather have Dream a million miles away and still laughing with him than suffocatingly close and silent.

'I can manage the two feet to my bed,' he says, and immediately regrets it. He can't find the words to apologize, even though apologizing is all he should be doing.

'No,' Dream says, and for a half-second there's a glint of bitter humour there before it's extinguished. 'That's not your bed.'

No, it isn't. It's Dream's bed. They don't have much they don't share, but they keep their own beds. Dream's with the green blanket, George's with blue pillows he made himself. 

George doesn't have words for his own stupidity. He turns around and looks for his own bed, but Dream lays a hand on his shoulder, warm and steady. George freezes.

'You can stay there for now,' he says quietly. His voice sounds deepest blue around the edges. 'Might be better.'

Wordlessly, he slips beneath the covers. Dream makes his bed with too many pillows and not enough blankets, and the lumps in the pillows aren't even in the right spots. 

It smells like him. Like pine and sun. George buries his face in the pillow and breathes in, eyes stinging. He wants to drown in him.

A hand touches his shoulder through the blanket. Not even skin to skin, and George aches for him.

'Go to sleep,' Dream says softly. His touch withdraws, and George is cold again. His words come from far away. 'I'll keep watch.'

He's too exhausted to argue. Words are losing their concrete form to colour and impulse, like sunslicked oil dancing on his fingertips, and the word _Dream_ washes over him in blues and reds. 

He sleeps better than he has in weeks, in months.

***

When he wakes up, Dream is sleeping on the ground beside him, dressed in his full armour, axe digging into the ground. His chest rises and falls awkwardly from how he's bent, like he fell asleep right where he was standing. 

His armour has left red marks on his skin. Dream used to complain about the leather padding on his shoulders when his armour was new. George remembers that. He remembers the way his eyelashes fluttered when George touched him. Remembers Dream in the river, water running down his back, the friction burns across his shoulder blades like the marks of Icarus' melted wings.

He has freckles on his cheeks. George drinks him in, knowing it's wrong, knowing Dream needs his distance. He's drunk on the sight of sunlight in his eyelashes.

He's beautiful. The idea slips into being, delicate as the dew on the leaves and overwhelming as a tidal wave.

When Dream wakes, George pretends to be asleep. He feels the heat of his hand half an inch from his skin, following the curve of his jaw, and hears him sigh softly.

He pretends to wake up an hour later. Dream helps him to his spot by the fire and never looks him in the eyes.

'Did you sleep in your armour?' he asks. 

'No,' Dream lies right to his face. 'Just put it on.'

George has been doing a lot of his own lying recently, but it still stings. He scrapes out his bowl of mushroom soup and hands it back. 

'Thank you.' The words don't carry. Dream moves to clean the bowl before George can get up.

It would be so much easier if Dream didn't treat him so gently. George wants to _burn_ , he wants to be shouted at, he wants a spark for the gasoline guilt simmering inside of him. 

All he mutters is _sorry_ , again, and though Dream's shoulders stiffen he doesn't say anything back.

When he gets up to go back to bed, he stumbles and Dream catches him. The only time they touch anymore is like this. The storm surge of orange almost makes him gasp.

'You can- you don't have to. I'm fine.'

Dream's gaze is soft. 'Just let me, George.'

_I think I would let you do anything_ \- the thought comes unbidden, guilty in the heat of maroon flush in his throat and orange handprints on his skin, on his hips. The image hooks him like a fish gasping on dry land, and he presses a hand over his mouth.

George thinks he'll burn up if he doesn't move back, but he can't. Like a moth drawn to the flame of warm orange, he is drowning and doesn't know if there's a way back to dry land. 

'Dream, let me go.'

He does, immediately, but he stays right there. 'George,' he says, thick with hurt. His voice trembles just slightly and George breaks, all over again for him. It's not his fault. George is the one that ruined them, and he decides that as much as it hurts, he has to step back.

Dream is more a part of him than colour and sound. Dream is _everything,_ and George won't drag him down to drown with him.

'You trust me,' George says quietly, not even a question. He doesn't have to see Dream nod, but he does, and he catches onto it like a stray branch in a flood. Holding on. 

'Always,' he says.

'Trust me on this.' George curls his hands tight, looks Dream in the eyes, and lies right through his teeth. Mauve shimmers in his vision. 'I just need my space.'

***

He never sees Dream without his armour anymore. He never sees his sunset shade of orange anymore.

Dream gives him his space. It hurts.

'You can leave camp if you want,' he says one day. He's worn raw with tension and the sick rhythm of waking up to Dream already in his armour, falling asleep to the sound of silver rather than orange warmth. He's sick of himself. 'I know you don't like staying in one spot.'

He laughs humourlessly. 'And let you die?'

'I won't die without you hovering over my shoulder,' he snaps. Dream recoils, and George regrets it again. 'I- I didn't mean that. I know you're just…'

'I'm trying to keep you alive,' he says. His eyes are cold. It's not fear that flashes at his fingertips when Dream looks at him that way, cold and impassive as water. It's something darker, aching, choking his breath away. 'Because I care about you, George. You do know that, don't you?'

George turns away, humiliated. The feeling is an angry, nauseous dark yellow. 'I know.'

He's a harsh kind of beautiful when he's angry. His features harden and his eyes glitter and it would be breathtaking if it wasn't because of George.

Dream talks again in the evening, in the worst way.

‘You said it was yellow.’ 

George stills. He knows their food is probably burning in the smouldering fire, but he can’t care. Dream's voice is so rare now, and George feels like he's starving for it.

‘What?’ he asks, trying to sound casual. Dream is turning the bone point of the arrow over and over in his hands, as if rubbing the blood away one more time.

‘When I was taking the arrow out. You said it was _yellow_.’ He holds the sharpened bone out towards the fire, but not even the golden glow turns it yellow. It’s dead and colourless. 

‘People say stupid things when they’re in pain, Dream.’ He turns the meat over on the logs, hands shaking. Sickly mauve guilt flicks across his tongue.

‘No. Stupid things is like…’ Some terrible, sorrowful expression flashes across his face, and his hands drift to his own scars from the dragon. 

_Oh God, George, I love you. I love you so much. Please, please, keep breathing, I don't know what I'd do without you_.

Dream won't fucking _look_ at him. He turns the arrowhead between his fingers, the fire glowing off his collarbones. 

'It's nothing important,' George says under his breath. Anger sparks under his tongue, thick and dark. 

'George.'

‘Just let it _go_ , Dream.’ Bitter greyish purple fills his mouth, the ashes of a huge hurtful rage. ‘It was nothing.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Well, you’re going to have to,' George spits. Anger burns the blue-apricot of his voice into russet. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Isn’t that enough?’ 

‘No.’ He stands up, fist tightening around the arrowhead. The firelight throws dramatic shadows on his features, making him look almost skeletal. 'I think I deserve to know.'

He does. Dream deserves the world and all George does is hurt him. What is _wrong_ with him?

'I'm sorry,' he says again, softer. 'I can't.'

Dream's face tightens, and he turns away, shoulders hunching, hands tight around his axe.

'Just go to bed,' he spits, and leaves the camp. The silver noise of his footsteps fades until George can hear nothing but fabric-blue wind and dark green rush of water, no matter how hard he strains.

For the first time in years, he falls asleep alone, and dreams of a man with golden green eyes and a bluegreen voice. Smiling and laughing and sunset-soaked like he was before everything changed.

_I care about you, George_ , Dream says, smiling like the sun. 

_Then why don't you look at me anymore_ , George thinks, and hates himself more for it. He knows why Dream keeps his distance. He's the one who's pushing him away.

And yet Dream stays by him, always ready to catch him if he falls. _I'm here, George, do you need me, do you want me?_

_I want you so much,_ George breathes, and lets himself fall into him, and it's like falling into the blue night sky or the deepest ocean.

_Dream_.

Dream is always so close, so _much_. Dream doesn't understand how to leave dying things to die, he doesn't understand how to let George drown in the riptide of his emotions. 

In his dreamland, he is touched and held and loved, and the messy wound in his side glows bright. That's what Dream does to him: he breaks George open and burns him up and George still loves him for it. He loves him, he wants him just like this. He wants him in the way that's danced between them for years. He wants to be painted bright with colour under Dream's hands. He wants to drown in him.

He reaches, in the dark. He sets him alight. Dream is impossible and infuriating and the dearest thing in George's life. Dream is _Dream_ and George is _in love with him-_

He wakes with a choking scream trapped behind his teeth. Dream. He is in love with Dream. His side is full of yellow splinters of pain.

He presses his hand over his mouth, teeth digging into his skin, the force of his emotions and gasping breath straining at his wound, pulling his whole body tight like a bowstring with a bone arrow. The sound of love and want and anguish claws out of him broken and pained. 

He is alone. Slowly and completely, George breaks, muffling his tears into Dream's pillows. There is nobody to bear witness but the moon and the river as his very soul sings for bluegreen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've also posted some real-life themed DNF fics, along with the realistic minecraft ones. Enjoy.
> 
> If you're wondering about the chapter titles and number of chapters, they're loose renditions of the actual stages of drowning.
> 
> -1050

**Author's Note:**

> My discord is twentycommittee #3793


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